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There will be no better box set this year than these seven films by Tarkovsky (1932-86), the supreme poet, philosopher and visionary of Russian cinema who was persecuted, humiliated and finally driven into exile by the vindictive Soviet authorities. His first feature, Ivan's Childhood (1962), is one of the great movies about the horrors of the second world war. His second, Andrei Rublev (1966), a portrait of the medieval icon painter, may be his masterpiece. Solaris (1972), his first colour movie, is a metaphysical sci-fi film that's a match for Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Mirror (1975) is a complex, semi-autobiographical film on the turbulent Stalinist era that baffled and infuriated cultural arbiters. In Stalker (1979) he returned to sci-fi territory with a fable set in a horrendous wasteland. His last two masterly allegories were made outside Russia, both starring Ingmar Bergman's closest friend, Erland Josephson, as a troubled intellectual. Nostalgia (1983) is set in Tuscany; The Sacrifice (1986) was photographed by Sven Nykvist on Bergman's Baltic island of Fårö. When The Sacrifice won the Grand Prix at Cannes it went unreported by the Soviet media.